Besides, Even I, in 1988 didn't know what the hell an Amiga was. It took a video tape of the effects work from Aegis VideoScape and the other cool programs to show me that a little PC could do the work of much more expensive, dedicated video equipment. Not even the Mac at that time could compete. Back then, a local guy was trying to make Crystal Topaz do better 3D animation than a Video Toaster. The Topaz software alone cost more than the Toaster, and couldn't do as good a job as Lightwave (1990)
>> Sorry, there are losers in any industry, and Amiga is gone. It's your problem if you can't let go of the past. The rest of us have work to do.<<
Well, you are probably right. In 1996 I finally broke down and bought a Mac clone. In the two years after Commodore's collapse, I was using a PowerMac 8100/80 at work. I had to move on to keep going in my chosen field of design. Yes, Commodore really Fsked up the Amiga, but I still keep a little hope that someone will bring it back. There are a lot of concepts that are still lost on the Windows, Mac and Linux communities that were the forefront of the Amiga. BeOS seems to be the closest. I just haven't had the time to download BeOs 5 to check it out.
Is the campaign to bring the Amiga back really keeping you from what's important to you? If not, just let it go and let those that feel that it is important, work to bring it back to it's former glory. You know, it is possible that you can just ignore the Amiga news and go on with your life... can't you?
A lot of things are easier than bringing the Amiga back. Either you didn't grow up using one or you didn't like it to begin with. That's fine. The Amiga isn't everyone's cup of tea. What it did have, back in it's heyday, was an incredible amount of power and flexibility. From it's lowly CLI, I learned the basics of a command line interface. It's windowing interface gave me the basics to run the Mac and Windows systems I use today. I am not a classic "hacker"... but I do score points when I have to work on the video still-store system we have that runs on a i486. I had to figure out a hack the previous IT guy did to make it hook up to our network. I feel that if I didn't have the Amiga experience 12 years ago, I wouldn't feel comfortable to hack things if I had only a Mac or Windows GUI background.
The platform tought me more than I can ever give back to it!!!!
F18 was very, very cool. I spent most of my time with Deluxe Paint and Imagine. TV-Paint, PageStream, Lightwave and DCTV are all important too. What's interesting is, all of these programs still exsist in one form or another today. The makers of DCTV are now PLAY. Pagestream is on other platforms. Lightwave is my tool of choice on the Mac now. Impulse has also ported to Windows... Imagine was always strange, but it tought me a lot... if not patience.
For games, I thought Maxon's Skychace was a great fighter duel!!!
Deluxe Paint? Well, it's not being developed today, but the main programmer did work for Autodesk and I think, worked on 3D Studio.
Jay Miner, the "Father of the Amiga" designed the Amiga's three custom co-processor chips. (Agnes, Denise and Paula)... He also designed the custom chips in the Atari 800.
One is 1978-79 vintage... the other is 1984-85.
I actually met Mr. Miner at an AmiExpo. He was a very nice (and brilliant) man who until the time of his death in 1994, ran a BBS and actually answered his mail.
To compare the Amiga to the Atari 800 in some way is a complement
I didn't get into the Amiga until 1988. The machine had already been out a few years, and I still didn't know what it was. (I still had an Atari 800 and computers weren't "cool" yet)
The Amiga 1000 literally, blew me away. The macs I saw in the seven years of being a heavy Amiga user never impressed me. I saw, probably, a higher lever of elegance, but it wasn't as fast. (A Quadra700 running Photoshop was not nearly as fast as TV-Paint with the same processor on a Retina card in an Amiga 3000). I always saw the design magazines with pages and pages of Mac produced design. Every once in awhile you would see something made on an Amiga. I later learned about the difference that a consistent interface to applications would make. Photoshop is probably the best paint program (software) I've ever used.
I have such a soft spot for the Amiga though... I still have a ton of Amiga hardware. Most of it is in 24 bit video hardware. But I also have learned to harness the power of the Mac's PowerPC chip. Probably not a day goes by that I wonder what Commmodore could have done had it been a "real" computer company, and not a "company that made widgets". (I believe that's a quote from a former Commodore employee like Dale Luck so someone)
Sigh... I'm pretty close to buying an Amiga developer kit. Perhaps I'll get past "hello world" in my "C" book.
Scott Thomas
a broadcast designer in Southwest Florida
As someone else mentioned, NTSC color goes back to the early '50s. There are great resources on the web detailing the history of the development of the system.
Non interlace RGB? With what bandwidth are you going to broadcast this with. Even with the new HDTV standard, it has to be compressed to fit within a 6Mhz slot.
If the console can do proper anti-aliasing and GUARANTEE a 60fps frame rate (Thats FIELDS not FRAMES) than a console could be more enjoyable on a standard definition television than an 800x600 computer display. Television is actually not 640x480. It's an analog format. The resolution is measured in Mhz of bandwidth by the number of scan lines (usually 486). Most post production in done in a format called D-1 which has 720 pixel samples on a scan line. The number could be raised into the thousands (Many high-end camera can resolve 800 to 1000 "line pairs".
Television aint perfect, but it aint all ban either.
>> And what is this giberish about no Linux apps? >> Shush your Mac freak whimpering! Corel will have >> DRAW and Paint out for Linux soon.
You say that like it's a good thing... Ever try converting a CorelDraw doc into Illustrator? Not fun. I've played with CorelPaint... Not even close to touching Photoshop. It's airbrush introduces lots of maching. Draw does some interesting things, but I wouldn't risk a clients job on it. Just wait for Adobe to port to Linux. Oh wait, they have to complete those OS-X ports first.
Yes, broadcast television is still working, but I question how well it is working. I work in the industry and I'm concerned about things like satellite broadcast and big cable (AOL-Time Warner) taking a bite out of the industry. When I first got into the biz, I felt a responsibility to the viewers. People do rely on television for important news and information. It's just sad that it's become rather sensationalized. While the broadcast industry has been for the most part, a cash cow, I think it's been a important part of the local community. How many web sites do you visit, reflect the community you live in? While I'm not getting rich in it, I do hope you will take some interest in television. Who knows, perhaps with the new ATSC digital television, you'll have a direct connection to the people who make the entertainment shows you like. I can't say that television has been too interested in dealing directly with the consumer in the past. I think that's going to have to change. Perhaps stations will have more interaction with you in the future. We'll all be transmitting 8VSB in a couple of years, maybe you slashdotters will have the killer app that makes it just that more useful to the viewers.
If anyone had the time, I imagine that someone could retrofit an exsisting 1/2" audio production deck with a new head-stack that could read the tapes. ??? If Les Paul could invent the multi-track recorder in the '50s, someone today could build a head stack that would read the tapes. We in the video industry are having the same problem with tape rot. I see a lot of Memorex tapes from about 20 years ago whoes oxide just sheads off! As the stuff decomposes, it gives off the strangest smell. Ewwwww.:)
>>Only after it was so successful was there a host of clones that never matched DOpus for what it was.
I think CLImate predates Dopus. It had a similar interface and concept but wasn't as powerful. I used a directory utility called SID by a guy named Timm Martin. It too predates Dopus I believe, and I used it for a very long time. In my eyes, it wasn't as complicated as Dopus to set up. I always liked using these types of programs to batch process files. Gotta convert 300 targa images to iff? no Problem!:)
Macrovision basicly messes with the AGC features of standard comsumer VCRs. At the top of the picture, just out of viewing area, Macrovision places these blocks that contain white at levels much hotter than the rest of the video. The AGC sees the hot video and adjusts the entire image to try and bring the hot white blocks to normal levels. Industrial recorders can defeat AGC or you can use a video switcher to mask off that part of the image.
After Sony created the BII and BIII speeds, there was pleanty of room to record a couple of movies on a tape. Sony lost more because they only licensed the system to a couple of companys while JVC licensed to anybody. Even at the slowest speeds, Beta had a longer track that produced a greater head to tape speed, resulting in a better picture. Sony was also first to innovate things like "Super Beta", "Beta HiFi", "ED Beta"(Extended Definition). All of these things were followed by VHS-HQ, VHS-HiFi and SuperVHS.
In or around 1982, Sony took the Beta cassette shell and oxide tape and created a pro/broadcast format called Betacam. What was a L750 Tape that recorded for an hour in BI became a broadcast quality 30Min tape. This was done not only by the faster tape speed, but also from the fact that the Chrominance and Luminance channels were recorded on their own tracks. At about the same time, Panasonic released a format with a similar background. M-Format was based on the VHS cassette and tape path and a standard tape would record for 20 or 30 minutes of component video just like the Betacam. M-Format was a complete flop. In my entire life, I've only seen one M-Format tape deck, and it wasn't being used. In contrast, I've used hundreds of Betacam machines and their offspring. Panasonic went back to the drawing board and created MII. NBC adopted it partialy and a few TV stations bought it. A mild success but they lost too much ground to Betacam.
OK, For extra credit. From what did Betamax's name come from? Where did the name M-Format come from?
Carl Sassenrath has created a new programming or scripting language called Rebol. I'm not smart enough to know what it can do. http://www.rebol.com
Dave Hayne has been working with what was called Pios, and was working for Scala. Pios has changed their name... ??? I still see his name from time to time.
How about Leo Schwab. He was a rather famous Amiga software designer. I believe he's now working for Be inc.
RJ Mical and Dale Luck were part of 3D0 (I think) I don't have any idea what the're doing now
Sounds more like something got damaged when the ROM was installed. I never had any problems with 2.04 that weren't related to software incompatibility. You may have had a blown 8520 chip.
>Actually my Amiga 500 started guruing far more >often with v2.04, it would even guru when I >turned off my external 2400 baud modem. That's >how unstable the platform was...:(
Well, to say that Doom on the PC killed the Amiga is a bit of a stretch. Not that Doom wasn't an important game... No, the Amiga's biggest problem was a director of engineering (named Syndes I think) put in place by the LBM. Rather than finish and put into production, the Amiga 3500 with the AA or AGA chip set. He shelved it and had the designers work up new machines with older chipsets and features no better than the Amiga 500. This was 1990!!! From this was born the Amiga 600, a machine that nobody wanted. Later the A3500 got cost reduced and hacked up to make the A4000... Oh just a few years late. By then the VGA chipsets overtook the Amiga. If Amiga had kept on the time table they prescribed in 89-90, The A4000 probably would have had a chipset codenamed AAA that would have had 24bit color. 24bit standard on a personal computer in about 1992 would have been amazing.
Whatever the name of the new Director of Engineering, he was responsible for the PCjr while at IBM. That should tell you something!!!
The stats for the display are correct. 320X400 at 64 colors (32 colors + 32 "half-bright" colors) and 640X400 with 16 colors. Half-bright mode was new in the ECS chipset, the first Amigas had only 32 colors in low res. The palette was 12bit allowing for 4096 "Possible" colors. There was a special mode called "Hold And Modify" (HAM) that worked under 320X400. I'm not sure of the math involved, but a pixel could be modified by an adjacent pixel, causing gradations or modifications of some sort. This mode could display all 4096 colors. This true hack done by Jay Miner almost didn't make it into the final production of the Agnes chip. It was left IN because it either would have left a hole of unused space on the chip die, or it would set back the production of the Amiga to redesign the chip. Jay Miner had said in retrospect that he was glad that he left it in. I'm glad he did as it allowed the Amiga to be the first personal computer to do photo realism in 3D programs. Anyone remember Sculpt 3D?
BTW I have about $15K of Amiga equipment that I would like to find a home for. (Scary when you start adding up all the money you've spent!)
Re:cutting edge 3d....done on Linux of course(NOT)
on
Review:Toy Story 2
·
· Score: 1
They only used the Alphas and Linux for the compositing and the rendering of the 3D water. The 3D modeling was done in Lightwave and other high end 3D apps. Probably Alias/Wavefront or Softimage.
check out http://www.digital.com/info/inFORM/issues/issue21/ 21cp0001.htm
Yes, Way too expensive and big, but I'm still using my original Message Pad. (before they called it the MP100) I mostly use it as a address book, but I also but driving directions into it for when I'm traveling. I'm starting to look seriously at a Palm OS device though. There has been talk of Apple working with Palm... Has any info on this come out yet?
Answer to the question direct from Intel
on
Is firewire dying?
·
· Score: 1
Here is a quote from Intel's own web site. Although Firewire can do much more than Intel would make you think.
>>>>>
Intel has been strongly committed for several years to the 1394 high-speed serial bus as the recommended connection between a PC and new digital AV consumer electronics (CE) equipment being developed in Japan and elsewhere. Intel sees 1394 as a "digital convergence pipe" connecting the PC to the world of digital CE, including digital camcorders, digital VHS, set-top boxes, and digital TV. 1394 allows the PC to participate and add value to consumer electronics equipment, and it brings rich audio/video data types to the PC. Intel sees convergence connectivity growing significantly in importance to the PC over time as the wealth of available 1394 devices increases.
>>>>>
All this from the same press release that brought on this discussion.
Oh sure, they invent the technology you love, and then you show them the door. There's gratitude for ya'. Never mind that Sony does work with Apple on the "joint licensing program". You make it sound like Apple only invented the cable. They invented the standard for moving the data that's on the chip inside your camera... Ha ha! No mater where you go you're carrying a little bit of Apple with you!!!
Slashdot Mirror
Besides, Even I, in 1988 didn't know what the hell an Amiga was. It took a video tape of the effects work from Aegis VideoScape and the other cool programs to show me that a little PC could do the work of much more expensive, dedicated video equipment. Not even the Mac at that time could compete. Back then, a local guy was trying to make Crystal Topaz do better 3D animation than a Video Toaster. The Topaz software alone cost more than the Toaster, and couldn't do as good a job as Lightwave (1990)
>> Sorry, there are losers in any industry, and Amiga is gone. It's your problem if you can't let go of the past. The rest of us have work to do.<<
Well, you are probably right. In 1996 I finally broke down and bought a Mac clone. In the two years after Commodore's collapse, I was using a PowerMac 8100/80 at work. I had to move on to keep going in my chosen field of design. Yes, Commodore really Fsked up the Amiga, but I still keep a little hope that someone will bring it back. There are a lot of concepts that are still lost on the Windows, Mac and Linux communities that were the forefront of the Amiga. BeOS seems to be the closest. I just haven't had the time to download BeOs 5 to check it out.
Is the campaign to bring the Amiga back really keeping you from what's important to you? If not, just let it go and let those that feel that it is important, work to bring it back to it's former glory. You know, it is possible that you can just ignore the Amiga news and go on with your life... can't you?
A lot of things are easier than bringing the Amiga back. Either you didn't grow up using one or you didn't like it to begin with. That's fine. The Amiga isn't everyone's cup of tea. What it did have, back in it's heyday, was an incredible amount of power and flexibility. From it's lowly CLI, I learned the basics of a command line interface. It's windowing interface gave me the basics to run the Mac and Windows systems I use today. I am not a classic "hacker"... but I do score points when I have to work on the video still-store system we have that runs on a i486. I had to figure out a hack the previous IT guy did to make it hook up to our network. I feel that if I didn't have the Amiga experience 12 years ago, I wouldn't feel comfortable to hack things if I had only a Mac or Windows GUI background.
The platform tought me more than I can ever give back to it!!!!
copy flame.txt >NULL:
F18 was very, very cool. I spent most of my time with Deluxe Paint and Imagine. TV-Paint, PageStream, Lightwave and DCTV are all important too. What's interesting is, all of these programs still exsist in one form or another today. The makers of DCTV are now PLAY. Pagestream is on other platforms. Lightwave is my tool of choice on the Mac now. Impulse has also ported to Windows... Imagine was always strange, but it tought me a lot... if not patience.
For games, I thought Maxon's Skychace was a great fighter duel!!!
Deluxe Paint? Well, it's not being developed today, but the main programmer did work for Autodesk and I think, worked on 3D Studio.
SPF-1000!
Jay Miner, the "Father of the Amiga" designed the Amiga's three custom co-processor chips. (Agnes, Denise and Paula)... He also designed the custom chips in the Atari 800.
One is 1978-79 vintage... the other is 1984-85.
I actually met Mr. Miner at an AmiExpo. He was a very nice (and brilliant) man who until the time of his death in 1994, ran a BBS and actually answered his mail.
To compare the Amiga to the Atari 800 in some way is a complement
I didn't get into the Amiga until 1988. The machine had already been out a few years, and I still didn't know what it was. (I still had an Atari 800 and computers weren't "cool" yet)
The Amiga 1000 literally, blew me away. The macs I saw in the seven years of being a heavy Amiga user never impressed me. I saw, probably, a higher lever of elegance, but it wasn't as fast. (A Quadra700 running Photoshop was not nearly as fast as TV-Paint with the same processor on a Retina card in an Amiga 3000). I always saw the design magazines with pages and pages of Mac produced design. Every once in awhile you would see something made on an Amiga. I later learned about the difference that a consistent interface to applications would make. Photoshop is probably the best paint program (software) I've ever used.
I have such a soft spot for the Amiga though... I still have a ton of Amiga hardware. Most of it is in 24 bit video hardware. But I also have learned to harness the power of the Mac's PowerPC chip. Probably not a day goes by that I wonder what Commmodore could have done had it been a "real" computer company, and not a "company that made widgets". (I believe that's a quote from a former Commodore employee like Dale Luck so someone)
Sigh... I'm pretty close to buying an Amiga developer kit. Perhaps I'll get past "hello world" in my "C" book.
Scott Thomas
a broadcast designer in Southwest Florida
>>> slap on some peltier REAL cooling action! .. Ramp it up to 220! <<<
Volts or Mhz?
I designed the artwork for a NTT website back in '98. Does that make me cool in any way? Just wondering...
Scott
Broadcast Designer
Fort Myers, FL
(BTW Hurricane Gordon is here now!!!)
As someone else mentioned, NTSC color goes back to the early '50s. There are great resources on the web detailing the history of the development of the system. Non interlace RGB? With what bandwidth are you going to broadcast this with. Even with the new HDTV standard, it has to be compressed to fit within a 6Mhz slot.
If the console can do proper anti-aliasing and GUARANTEE a 60fps frame rate (Thats FIELDS not FRAMES) than a console could be more enjoyable on a standard definition television than an 800x600 computer display. Television is actually not 640x480. It's an analog format. The resolution is measured in Mhz of bandwidth by the number of scan lines (usually 486). Most post production in done in a format called D-1 which has 720 pixel samples on a scan line. The number could be raised into the thousands (Many high-end camera can resolve 800 to 1000 "line pairs". Television aint perfect, but it aint all ban either.
The man who designed the graphics and sound chips in the Atari 8bit system is the same guy who designed the Amiga chipset.
http://www.jms.org/jay-miner.html
>> And what is this giberish about no Linux apps?
>> Shush your Mac freak whimpering! Corel will have
>> DRAW and Paint out for Linux soon.
You say that like it's a good thing...
Ever try converting a CorelDraw doc into Illustrator? Not fun. I've played with CorelPaint... Not even close to touching Photoshop. It's airbrush introduces lots of maching. Draw does some interesting things, but I wouldn't risk a clients job on it. Just wait for Adobe to port to Linux. Oh wait, they have to complete those OS-X ports first.
Yes, broadcast television is still working, but I question how well it is working. I work in the industry and I'm concerned about things like satellite broadcast and big cable (AOL-Time Warner) taking a bite out of the industry. When I first got into the biz, I felt a responsibility to the viewers. People do rely on television for important news and information. It's just sad that it's become rather sensationalized. While the broadcast industry has been for the most part, a cash cow, I think it's been a important part of the local community. How many web sites do you visit, reflect the community you live in? While I'm not getting rich in it, I do hope you will take some interest in television. Who knows, perhaps with the new ATSC digital television, you'll have a direct connection to the people who make the entertainment shows you like. I can't say that television has been too interested in dealing directly with the consumer in the past. I think that's going to have to change. Perhaps stations will have more interaction with you in the future. We'll all be transmitting 8VSB in a couple of years, maybe you slashdotters will have the killer app that makes it just that more useful to the viewers.
:)
BTW, we don't have Jerry Springer where I work.
Scott Thomas
Broadcast Designer
Fort Myers, FL
If anyone had the time, I imagine that someone could retrofit an exsisting 1/2" audio production deck with a new head-stack that could read the tapes. ??? If Les Paul could invent the multi-track recorder in the '50s, someone today could build a head stack that would read the tapes. We in the video industry are having the same problem with tape rot. I see a lot of Memorex tapes from about 20 years ago whoes oxide just sheads off! As the stuff decomposes, it gives off the strangest smell. Ewwwww. :)
>>Only after it was so successful was there a host of clones that never matched DOpus for what it was.
:)
I think CLImate predates Dopus. It had a similar interface and concept but wasn't as powerful. I used a directory utility called SID by a guy named Timm Martin. It too predates Dopus I believe, and I used it for a very long time. In my eyes, it wasn't as complicated as Dopus to set up. I always liked using these types of programs to batch process files. Gotta convert 300 targa images to iff? no Problem!
Macrovision basicly messes with the AGC features of standard comsumer VCRs. At the top of the picture, just out of viewing area, Macrovision places these blocks that contain white at levels much hotter than the rest of the video. The AGC sees the hot video and adjusts the entire image to try and bring the hot white blocks to normal levels. Industrial recorders can defeat AGC or you can use a video switcher to mask off that part of the image.
>>Beta failed because the tapes were too short.
After Sony created the BII and BIII speeds, there was pleanty of room to record a couple of movies on a tape. Sony lost more because they only licensed the system to a couple of companys while JVC licensed to anybody. Even at the slowest speeds, Beta had a longer track that produced a greater head to tape speed, resulting in a better picture. Sony was also first to innovate things like "Super Beta", "Beta HiFi", "ED Beta"(Extended Definition). All of these things were followed by VHS-HQ, VHS-HiFi and SuperVHS.
In or around 1982, Sony took the Beta cassette shell and oxide tape and created a pro/broadcast format called Betacam. What was a L750 Tape that recorded for an hour in BI became a broadcast quality 30Min tape. This was done not only by the faster tape speed, but also from the fact that the Chrominance and Luminance channels were recorded on their own tracks. At about the same time, Panasonic released a format with a similar background. M-Format was based on the VHS cassette and tape path and a standard tape would record for 20 or 30 minutes of component video just like the Betacam. M-Format was a complete flop. In my entire life, I've only seen one M-Format tape deck, and it wasn't being used. In contrast, I've used hundreds of Betacam machines and their offspring. Panasonic went back to the drawing board and created MII. NBC adopted it partialy and a few TV stations bought it. A mild success but they lost too much ground to Betacam.
OK, For extra credit. From what did Betamax's name come from? Where did the name M-Format come from?
Scottgfx
TV and Media slut
Carl Sassenrath has created a new programming or scripting language called Rebol. I'm not smart enough to know what it can do.
http://www.rebol.com
Dave Hayne has been working with what was called Pios, and was working for Scala. Pios has changed their name... ??? I still see his name from time to time.
How about Leo Schwab. He was a rather famous Amiga software designer. I believe he's now working for Be inc.
RJ Mical and Dale Luck were part of 3D0 (I think) I don't have any idea what the're doing now
Sounds more like something got damaged when the ROM was installed. I never had any problems with 2.04 that weren't related to software incompatibility. You may have had a blown 8520 chip.
:(
>Actually my Amiga 500 started guruing far more
>often with v2.04, it would even guru when I
>turned off my external 2400 baud modem. That's
>how unstable the platform was...
Well, to say that Doom on the PC killed the Amiga is a bit of a stretch. Not that Doom wasn't an important game... No, the Amiga's biggest problem was a director of engineering (named Syndes I think) put in place by the LBM. Rather than finish and put into production, the Amiga 3500 with the AA or AGA chip set. He shelved it and had the designers work up new machines with older chipsets and features no better than the Amiga 500. This was 1990!!! From this was born the Amiga 600, a machine that nobody wanted. Later the A3500 got cost reduced and hacked up to make the A4000... Oh just a few years late. By then the VGA chipsets overtook the Amiga. If Amiga had kept on the time table they prescribed in 89-90, The A4000 probably would have had a chipset codenamed AAA that would have had 24bit color. 24bit standard on a personal computer in about 1992 would have been amazing.
Whatever the name of the new Director of Engineering, he was responsible for the PCjr while at IBM. That should tell you something!!!
The stats for the display are correct. 320X400 at 64 colors (32 colors + 32 "half-bright" colors) and
640X400 with 16 colors. Half-bright mode was new in the ECS chipset, the first Amigas had only 32 colors
in low res. The palette was 12bit allowing for 4096 "Possible" colors. There was a special mode called
"Hold And Modify" (HAM) that worked under 320X400. I'm not sure of the math involved, but a pixel could
be modified by an adjacent pixel, causing gradations or modifications of some sort. This mode could
display all 4096 colors. This true hack done by Jay Miner almost didn't make it into the final production of
the Agnes chip. It was left IN because it either would have left a hole of unused space on the chip die, or it
would set back the production of the Amiga to redesign the chip. Jay Miner had said in retrospect that he
was glad that he left it in. I'm glad he did as it allowed the Amiga to be the first personal computer to do
photo realism in 3D programs. Anyone remember Sculpt 3D?
BTW I have about $15K of Amiga equipment that I would like to find a home for. (Scary when you start
adding up all the money you've spent!)
They only used the Alphas and Linux for the compositing and the rendering of the 3D water. The 3D modeling was done in Lightwave and other high end 3D apps. Probably Alias/Wavefront or Softimage.
/ 21cp0001.htm
check out http://www.digital.com/info/inFORM/issues/issue21
Yes, Way too expensive and big, but I'm still using my original Message Pad. (before they called it the MP100) I mostly use it as a address book, but I also but driving directions into it for when I'm traveling. I'm starting to look seriously at a Palm OS device though. There has been talk of Apple working with Palm... Has any info on this come out yet?
Here is a quote from Intel's own web site. Although Firewire can do much more than Intel would make you think.
>>>>>
Intel has been strongly committed for several years to the 1394 high-speed serial bus as the
recommended connection between a PC and new digital AV consumer electronics (CE)
equipment being developed in Japan and elsewhere. Intel sees 1394 as a "digital
convergence pipe" connecting the PC to the world of digital CE, including digital camcorders,
digital VHS, set-top boxes, and digital TV. 1394 allows the PC to participate and add value to
consumer electronics equipment, and it brings rich audio/video data types to the PC. Intel
sees convergence connectivity growing significantly in importance to the PC over time as the
wealth of available 1394 devices increases.
>>>>>
All this from the same press release that brought on this discussion.
> "Screw Apple"????
Oh sure, they invent the technology you love, and then you show them the door. There's gratitude for ya'. Never mind that Sony does work with Apple on the "joint licensing program". You make it sound like Apple only invented the cable. They invented the standard for moving the data that's on the chip inside your camera... Ha ha! No mater where you go you're carrying a little bit of Apple with you!!!